HOW TO TRACK LEADS FROM MARKETING TO SALES

HOW TO TRACK LEADS FROM MARKETING TO SALES

Do you have trouble measuring the ROI of your marketing efforts? If you answered “yes,” don’t worry – you’re not alone. 75% of surveyed marketers say they struggle with calculating marketing ROI because they don’t actually know how much revenue their programs are generating.

For many CMOs and marketers, unqualified inquiries are just handed off to sales, and there is no reporting mechanism to track them once they are delivered. And while sales representatives know which leads convert, this information isn’t always shared with the marketing team.

With no conversion information, marketers can only rely on vanity metrics (and sometimes guesswork) to answer the ROI question. This is a problem because vanity metrics don’t necessarily reflect real business results, which makes it difficult for marketers to measure the effectiveness of their marketing programs.

So how do you overcome this challenge? A recent infographic from TechnologyAdvice provides some clues.

The key is to break down the silos between marketing and sales with “lead reciprocity.” Lead reciprocity is the open exchange of lead information between marketing and sales. This can be accomplished through technology and strategic alignment:

TECHNOLOGY ALIGNMENT

The integration of marketing automation and CRM platforms gives both marketing and sales end-to-end visibility into lead data and status. Marketers can now track leads, close rates and other important conversion metrics, while sales reps can monitor where leads were generated, how they were qualified, and how long they have been active.

Combining CRM and marketing automation has many benefits. The systems integration enables marketers to track which leads are converted into customers, so they can have a more complete picture of how their marketing efforts contribute to total sales and revenue.

For many organizations, their marketing teams use a lead pipeline that is separate from the sales pipeline. Systems integration is an opportunity to align marketing and sales and to establish a shared pipeline, helping both teams better understand and work toward their common goals.

SALES AND MARKETING ALIGNMENT

Sales and Marketing alignment is often cited as the biggest challenge most marketers face. In addition to systems integration, marketing and sales also need to be aligned strategically. Both teams need to work together to establish and follow a standardized lead generation process, and maintain open communication about it.

By doing so, sales reps can help inform marketers which sources are creating the best opportunities and how to produce content that converts. This feedback helps marketers identify and focus their resources on the most effective campaign tactics that will ultimately drive more sales and revenue.

Strategic alignment also provides marketing and sales an opportunity to set and collaborate on shared goals and responsibilities, rather than working in silos on their individual targets.

According to SiriusDecisions, B2B companies with aligned marketing and sales teams achieve 24% faster revenue growth and 27% faster profit growth compared to their siloed counterparts.

MAXIMIZING TECHNOLOGY AND STRATEGIC ALIGNMENT

Once your strategies and technologies are integrated, here are three additional steps you can take to maximize your marketing and sales alignment:

1. Build Attribution Models

An attribution model is a way to measure effectiveness of each marketing touchpoint in the buyer journey which contributes to the ultimate conversion. Marketing attribution helps justify your marketing spend and identify opportunities for future improvement.

89% of marketers surveyed by Adobe reported that attribution has a positive impact on their business, and 29% say it has a major positive impact.

2. Improve Lead Generation

Attribution and open exchange of conversion data allow you to gain rich insights into the effectiveness of your marketing campaign tactics and channels. By creating a scoring system based on your conversion information, you can focus on the marketing efforts that will generate higher quality leads.

3. Measure ROI

Go beyond numbers like site traffic and monthly leads – you can now demonstrate clear marketing ROI by focusing on metrics that directly tie to business value, such as lead-to-customer ratio, average cost per lead, and average lead value.

By doing so, you can show your executive team how your marketing efforts are directly driving the company’s revenue and growth, to build a strong business case for your marketing spend and budget.

B2b Start Ups Problems 1(Fear)

THE MOST COMMON FEARS OF EVERY WRITER

Every writer faces fears. I believe content marketers are writers too, as most of them brainstorm ideas, research, create, and generate writings for blogs and websites themselves.

Everything connected to words, sentences, paragraphs, and texts is writing, and sometimes content creation is even more time and energy consuming than writing poems or novels, for example.

Take a look at these 20 most common fears of every writer:

Not all work for content marketers, but each helps in creating content that converts. Based on that list, the fears of content marketers are:

• fear of rejection
• fear of failure
• fear your writing is not good enough

Being a content creator, I would add the following fears:

• fear no one will want to read and share your texts
• fear your articles are poorly written
• fear of sitting in front of a blank page and… feel nothing
• fear you are not much of a writer
• fear that all your articles are just… poor rewriting

All these fears can help you write better.

How?

FEAR TELLS WHAT YOU NEED

Most of us try to avoid fear, but it can help to understand what we need as content marketers.

For example, my fear of criticism hides the desire to see my finished works perfectly articulated, and my fear that no one will want to share my texts represents the desire to receive praise from my family and friends.

The fear of rejection helps content marketers create texts that rock, paying more attention to their relevance, readability, and usefulness. Self-doubt makes them want to run, and the fear of failure helps to generate content that is well-researched, plagiarism-free, full of authoritative references, and worth bookmarking.

FEAR ENCOURAGES TO TAKE RISKS

Content marketing is a risk. Every time you publish texts on the web you risk to fail or be compared to others, not in your favor. But it doesn’t mean you stop writing, does it?

You take this risk and go on. Yes, sometimes the audience doesn’t accept your content, finding it boring or stupid, and it makes you even more fearful… But it helps you learn the audience better at the same time to deliver them better content in the future.

FEAR ENHANCES ACTION

We are built to feel fear, and it’s a part of the fight-or-flight response: fear saves us by triggering our bodies into action; and when something scares us, we have two ways to deal with that: face it or run from it.

That’s how it works actually:

How does it work when you are a content marketer?

Only two options you have when trying to reach the audience with your content marketing strategy: fail or success. But you understand that if you don’t generate any content because of fears or doubts – the only option is left for you, and it’s… a fail.

“Thinking will not overcome fear but action will.”

Your fear of failure enhances action: you start researching, writing, and generating interesting, useful, and shareable content. Actions are rewarding, so do what you fear: sooner or later your marketing strategy will flourish.

Only two options you have when trying to reach the audience with your content marketing strategy: fail or success. But you understand that if you don’t generate any content because of fears or doubts – the only option is left for you, and it’s… a fail.

Your fear of failure enhances action: you start researching, writing, and generating interesting, useful, and shareable content. Actions are rewarding, so do what you fear: sooner or later your marketing strategy will flourish.

FEAR AWAKENS CREATIVITY

As well as all people, content marketers sometimes feel a gap between where they are and where they want to be. The bigger this gap, the bigger the fear and the greater the tension. To change the situation, to get rid of this tension, or to relieve the fear, many change the vision of where they want to be… Even worse, they stop asking the questions, what leads them to that gap.

This tactic is wrong.

The right tactic would be to face this fear and embrace this tension, as they are an important part of the creative process: fear awakens creativity, motivating minds to search a solution for relieving that gap. It often appears that fears make us come up with creatively different and unusual ideas.

FEAR BUILDS CONFIDENCE

So, thanks to your fears, you take risks and do something that scares you. Having survived that risk successfully, you become stronger. Moreover, fear makes you a better leader.

As a result, you grow confidence and motivate yourself to keep going and create content that will convert and bring you positive results by all means. Each step into your fear builds spirits, making you a better and more professional content marketer, as it motivates you to improve your skills, learn new things to stand out from the crowd, and come up with better content plans and strategies.

FEAR BUILDS PATIENCE

Content marketers are not alien to writer blocks, lack of ideas for worthwhile content and its promotion, etc. It’s another type of fear, which is a fear of the unknown.

You analyze the content of your competitors, and a kind of these thoughts comes to your mind:

“Okay… They’ve already said everything on the topic. I have nothing interesting to add… I am not sure I’ll be able to expand it with the same success… Well, it’s no point to write about it again…”

Hey! Whaaaat?

It’s your fear of failure again! Why do you think you can’t do that? Be patient, do research, find details, try a new approach. Even if you fail this time, so what? Such failures make us more experienced content marketers, knowledgeable about every detail of our work.

After all,

And here it goes…

FEAR HELPS TO SUCCEED

Embracing their fears, content marketers are able to turn the impossible into possible. I know, some of you are skeptical about that, as we all know the cases when fear paralyzed people preventing them from doing something and achieving their goals. Frankly speaking, I am one of such people though my fear was not about my professional but personal life…

But as Constantine D’Amato, a boxing manager and trainer, once said,

So, make fear your best friend on the way to success.

To make fear work for you, follow these steps:

1. Face it.
2. Name your fear.
3. Think about what you want that is behind this fear.
4. Write about your fears. List the steps to take for overcoming each of them.
5. Fall in love with your fear.

It’s easy to do. First, you realize that something freaks you out; second, you don’t run away from it but face the fear instead; third, your brain starts looking for solutions, weighing options, and choosing the best course of action; finally, you understand it was fear who helped you think outside the box.

The last thing to remember:

All marketers know that fear can help them sell. Many of them influence the audience, playing on heartstrings. If you want to master this trick and start to sell using fear, this post by Russ Henneberry will spill the beans.

You don’t need fearlessness. Instead, look your fear in the eye and let it know you are ready to work with it.

The bigger your fear, the better chances you are on the right track trying to create something wonderful.